Field
The disclosed embodiments generally relate to techniques for initializing optical communication links. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to a link-training auto-negotiation protocol that uses three-way handshakes while initializing an optical communication link.
Related Art
As optical networks become increasingly fast, the signals transmitted through the optical networks are becoming progressively more sensitive to noise, which can give rise to errors in transmitted data. In order to reduce this noise to acceptable levels, it is becoming necessary to perform initialization operations to tune the individual components in the optical transmitters and receivers in the optical links to filter out the noise. This tuning process is both complicated and time-consuming. Moreover, the tuning process is incompatible with existing link initialization protocols, which require initialization operations to complete within fixed time intervals, because it is typically not possible to know in advance how much time the tuning process will require.
Hence, what is needed is a technique for initializing an optical link that provides sufficient flexibility to accommodate a time-consuming tuning operation to filter out unwanted noise.